How you can be tracked by your car or cell phone

The inconspicuous devices are sometimes installed at fixed points, as
the DEA has been doing in several border states, but they’re most often
mounted on local police cruisers, where they automatically scan and
record every license plate that comes within range of their optical
sensor.

When they pass an LPR-equipped police car, drivers both
innocent and guilty have their whereabouts recorded and tagged with GPS
coordinates, along with a color photo and a time stamp. The resulting
information is often kept for years, allowing law enforcement to engage
in a kind of retroactive surveillance to find out who was where, and at
what time.

The data is collected and accessed without the need for
warrants or probable cause, because courts have so far held that a
license plate – which, after all, is posted very clearly on every
driver’s bumper – can’t be considered private information. Privacy
advocates think the courts may reevaluate that stance, as LPR systems
become so widespread that they allow for tracking on a massive scale.

There's discussion at the link as to whether or to what extent this is an invasion of privacy. For the cell phone, see Cory Doctorow's post at BoingBoing:

Cell phones are tracking devices that make phone calls. It’s sad, but
it’s true. Which means software solutions don’t always matter. You can
have a secure set of tools on your phone, but it doesn’t change the fact
that your phone tracks everywhere you go. And the police can
potentially push updates onto your phone that backdoor it and allow it
to be turned into a microphone remotely, and do other stuff like that.
The police can identify everybody at a protest by bringing in a device
called an IMSI catcher. It’s a fake cell phone tower that can be built
for 1500 bucks. And once nearby, everybody’s cell phones will
automatically jump onto the tower, and if the phone’s unique identifier
is exposed, all the police have to do is go to the phone company and ask
for their information...

...remember that whatever governments can do with technology, organized
criminals can do too (this is doubly true of back-doors that governments
mandate in telecoms equipment and software to make spying easier --
they can be used by anyone, not just "good guys").

6 comments:

It's not only your cell phone that tracks you. It's also all internet accounts you have, especially those with Google and Facebook. They know where you check their sites. Your bank knows where you are every time you use plastic money.

My wife and I are always saying, and American's are free? Our freedom and rights have been squashed so badly, we're going to move to the UK, at least there we know the rules and know that we're being watched.

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